<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Avalon by roaroftheninth</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776169">Avalon</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth'>roaroftheninth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cursed (TV 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:09:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,085</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25776169</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/roaroftheninth/pseuds/roaroftheninth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nearly ten years after taking the throne, King Arthur's reign ends in a bloody battle at Camlann. As he is dying, Guinevere and Lancelot take him to the isle of Avalon to say their goodbyes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthur/Red Spear | Guinevere (Cursed), Red Spear | Guinevere &amp; The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Avalon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>According to Arthurian legend, King Arthur was taken to Avalon after having been mortally wounded in battle against his nephew, Mordred, and it was said that he would one day return to lead his people against their enemies. I love a good King Arthur story, so I wanted to write this scene from the point of view of the characters as we know them on Cursed. In particular, I wanted to write Red Spear, since poor Guinevere gets no agency at all in the legends.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The air smelled salty-sweet like the sea, but it was almost completely still. Lancelot had never known anything like it. This kind of unnatural quiet set him on edge, when he encountered it in the woods. Out here, where there was nothing but sand, grassy dunes, and the glittering expanse of calm water for many miles, he knew that there was nothing lying in wait. It simply felt like the world had paused, for just a moment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Was this what happened when a King died?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He remembered Uther’s death, nearly ten years past, the result of his own guard turning on him as the Red Spear advanced on his last stronghold with the full might of Cumber, the armies of the last great houses of the old pre-Roman nobility, and what was left of the Fey behind her. The air had smelled like blood. Lancelot had tasted it. It had not been like this.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then again, Uther had never been a true King.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>The Sword never chose him,</em> was a common refrain later, because Arthur had so cleverly – and rightly – made it a symbol of his reign, in order to grant himself an insulating layer of legitimacy (not necessarily a given when one took a throne by force). But the Sword had had nothing to do with it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot had never been a fervent advocate for the Sword of Power – <em>Excalibur</em>, as it had come to be known – deciding who should lead. Though Arthur had wielded it well since he had united their warring kingdom to drive out the paladins and depose Uther, it wasn’t the Sword that had made him a great King, and in fact, Lancelot had always been wary of it. He had touched the weapon precisely once, when Arthur had had it knocked from his hands during an assassination attempt that no one had anticipated. Lancelot had snatched up the blade from where it lay on the cobbles of the great chamber of Arthur’s court and dispatched the assassin, after which he had dropped the sword like it had burned him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Arthur had watched him closely.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>There’s something wrong with that blade,</em> Lancelot had told him.<em> It’s cursed.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Arthur had cleaned the blood from it without answering. It had never felt that way to him, of course. But Lancelot knew better than to touch it again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ultimately, it had made no difference. Arthur was dead, nine years into the reign he had shared, for better or for worse, with the Red Spear. Lancelot didn’t know what would happen next, if Guinevere would regain control of the fractured kingdom or if the Saxons who had banded behind Mordred would emerge victorious. But he knew what he would do next. It burned within him, so bright and hot that it made his skin itch.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Lancelot.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He didn’t turn right away at the sound of his name. He knew who had said it. It had taken her a long time to make the change, from the curt, derisive <em>Monk.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he did turn, he found the warrior Queen watching him. There were threads of grey now in the hair she still wore braided back from her face. He had a sudden, fervent hope that she would live a long time, but he knew better than to expect it. She would hate it, anyway, and she would have told him that, had he voiced it aloud. It had always been clear, in everything she had ever done, that Guinevere intended to fight until she was killed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Death or glory.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s time,” she told him. She turned away without waiting for him to reply, walking back up the beach toward the meager pile of brush and wood they had managed to gather. From here, Lancelot couldn’t quite make out Arthur’s still form, even though he knew it was there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Arthur would have wanted to live to be old. In that way, he was unlike both his wife and his closest friend, if Lancelot could still call himself that after everything that had happened. After everything he had <em>done.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>He could still picture, with visceral clarity, the heartbreak on Arthur’s face. Lancelot did not believe that Arthur had ever expected Guinevere, who had made it very clear from the outset that she made her own rules, to be entirely faithful. They had loved one another in their own way, but it had always been clear that they co-ruled because Guinevere believed it her birthright to hold Cumber, and that the might of her armies had been instrumental in taking the crown. But Arthur had never expected to be blindsided by the knight he trusted first and best.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Perhaps Arthur trusted too easily, at that. Lancelot had planned to leave, all those years ago, after he had returned Percival to the Fey on the beaches. He hadn’t had a plan, but he had known that he was not welcome. It was perhaps an act of the divine that had seen them set upon by the dregs of the red paladins who had battled Uther’s armies in the days before. Lancelot had saved Arthur’s life on the beach – easily, in the heat of battle, without thinking much about it. It hadn’t been the first or the last time for it. As it turned out, Arthur was the kind of man who didn’t forget such things easily.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>You belong here,</em> Arthur had insisted, though he had known that he risked losing the support of the Fey in those crucial early days when he had been consolidating his hold on the throne. <em>I need you.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>That, more than anything, was why Lancelot had stayed. He had fought the red paladins and other enemies on behalf of the Fey, but they had never fully accepted him. Percival, yes, and Pym, and perhaps a small handful of others, but not many. There might even be a majority of them now who believed that he had fought for their lives, but they would never trust him. He understood that he deserved that. He had never had the temerity to believe that he could somehow redeem himself for everything he had done before. He would never be finished redeeming himself. He would have to continue to even out his ledger until it killed him. But Arthur had not treated him that way.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Of course, it had been easier for Arthur to overlook his past, since Arthur was human. Lancelot had not been a good man when they had met, but it had never been personal for Arthur, the way it was for the Fey.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot turned to walk up the beach, ignoring the gulls that circled overhead. He had known the sea in his childhood, but had avoided it most of his adult life. It could have been the way his memories coloured it, but in his estimation, the cry of the birds was the loneliest sound in the world. (Arthur would have made fun of him for saying that. <em>Poetry? Stick to swordplay.</em>)</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When he reached Guinevere, she did not look at him. Arthur’s body was bloody and bruised on the pyre, but he still looked like himself. Lancelot remembered hunkering down in the small boat that had brought them here, to the island.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>You can kill ten men as soon as look at them but you’re still frightened of the sea?</em> Guinevere had demanded. <em>After all this time?</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot had never explained to her the exact, crushing weight in his lungs whenever he found himself without land under him, because he never examined the source of it himself. The Ash Folk did not burn, so the first paladins he had ever seen had devised a crueler fate. He knew, intellectually, that his parents had been drowned, and his grandmother, and his cousins. He had seen it. But he had surgically separated the memory from the pain that came with it, until it was like it had happened to someone else. It had been a matter of survival, with Father Carden. And now it was an old wound, like the scar on his side from the Trinity Guard. He didn’t revisit it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>With his head down, as Guinevere had steered the boat, Lancelot had not watched Arthur die. He remembered, very specifically, the way Arthur’s fingers had gripped his wrist, tightly, and then relaxed. But he had not watched.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Do you know any prayers?” Guinevere asked him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot shook his head. “None that would serve,” he said.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She gave him a look. She hid her pain well, but he could read it in the way she spoke to him, the way she had when they had first met. Before everything that had happened. “Weren’t you a monk?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Aren’t you a queen?” he returned. <em>And his wife,</em> he did not add.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She said nothing, for a moment. Then: “They will sing songs about him.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot nodded. “Even the one he doesn’t like. About being a terrible excuse for a bard.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere nearly laughed. “Especially that one.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After another beat, she added, “Above all else, he was a good man. That is often said of the dead, and it is rarely true. But he was. ”</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>For whatever that is worth,</em> she did not say. If it was worth anything.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot knelt by the edge of the pyre, reaching out to lay his hand on the wood. The texture was smooth against his palm, the wood old and dry from having drifted in from the sea years or decades past. It would burn well.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The fire came easily to him now. The wood caught almost at once, under his hand, and he rose and stepped back.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“The King is dead,” he said. “Long live the Queen.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere said nothing as the flames grew higher, though she stepped back, away from the heat. The two of them remained that way for a long time, even as the sun began to set behind them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What will you do now?” She asked him. She had not assumed that he would stay; they knew each other well enough by now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What I have to do,” he replied. “Mordred still lives.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere nodded. “Slit his throat all the way to the bone,” she said.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot knew that he would.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“What shall we tell them?” he asked.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere’s mouth turned downward, bitter. “Not that he’s dead,” she said. “Not until I’m sure I can hold the throne without him and that bloody sword.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot knew that she was right. “Then we’ll promise that he’ll return,” he said. It would serve for a time, for as long as Guinevere needed it to. Arthur would not be the first King to pass into legend in this way; Lancelot had learned tales like this at his mother’s knee. He wondered now if perhaps the figures in those stories had been real, the way Arthur had been real. He wondered if the people who had loved them had invented those stories for the same reasons.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You think people will believe that?” Guinevere asked. It wasn’t a challenge; she was merely thoughtful.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“They’ll want to,” Lancelot pointed out.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The flames reflected in the Queen’s eyes as she watched the fire. “The great King Arthur. Destined to return and drive those Saxon bastards back into the sea.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I hope you won’t need him for that,” Lancelot said.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere tilted her head. “So do I.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>After another long silence, Guinevere turned toward the ocean. Tipping her head back, she raised her voice in a long, carrying war cry that was swallowed by the darkening sky. Lancelot bowed his head. It wasn’t a prayer, but it felt like one.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The journey back from the island was somehow shorter than the journey there. Perhaps it was because the sea was dead-calm, but Lancelot’s only concession to his dread of the waves this time was to grip the side of the boat tightly. When they had pulled the boat up onto the shore, he stepped back, pulling his hood up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere smiled faintly at the gesture, familiar as it was.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Until we meet again,” she said.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lancelot knew better than to assume that they would. “I would like that,” he replied, instead.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guinevere laughed. “We all meet again, Monk. In this life, or the next one.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>She turned away, and started up the beach. Lancelot watched her until she disappeared into the dark, before he turned to follow his own path back to the cliffs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Unlike most men who planned to kill a usurper King, Lancelot hoped that Mordred knew he was coming.  </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>